When Father Was Away on Business and Occupation in 26 Frames - Essay Example

College: When Father was Away on Business and Occupation in 26 Frames The movies, When Father was Away on Business and Occupation in 26 Frames share a number of similarities in the depiction themes through related episodes in both films. The comparative episodes and themes were as a result of the setting of the two movies. Both the movies were acted in Yugoslavia at the moment when the nation was still experiencing the adverse drawbacks of the World War II, in the 19th Century. Yugoslavia as a nation, felt the harsh consequences of the Second World War more it did in the World War I. Nearly all the sectors of the economy were affected and the peace of the nation was highly compromised. There was a great fluctuation in the economy as the nation experienced a massive internal strife. There was also a lot of pressure coming from the neighboring powerful states such as Germany and Italy. These advanced nations had become sadists of the situation in Yugoslavia and were taking advantage of every slim opportunity to fulfill their own interests. The natives of Yugoslavia also turned against each other as one party fought for dissolution of the state while others, the communist, tried to resist the move. The aforementioned movies, though take the fiction form, try to depict the reality of what actually took place in the post World War II in Yugoslavia. The two films have narrowed down the situation to a family level so that the audience could see what the individual people felt in such a time of crisis. However, there is slight manipulation of the dialogue and picture in the similar episodes so as to portray different ideologies and different times during the crisis. Occupation in 26 Frames, as shall be discussed later on in this essay, shares a number of ideas and themes with its counterpart, When Father was Away on Business. The former has the setting of Yugoslavia when the nation at verge of dissolution, marked by mass killing of the Serbs and the communist that were the main opponent of the Ustasha regime. As the movie unfolds, three friends, Niko, Toni and Miho are very close together. They do almost everything together and their ideas seem to be quite unified by the strong bonds of the friendship. They all belong to one fencing club Dubrovnik city. It would be of great essence to note from the onset that these three friends were of very different origin. Except Niko who was a Croatian, Toni was an Italian by birth while Miho was a Jewish. Besides, the Croatian was from a rich background and had much influence on the two. Just like in When Father was Away on Business, these characters are portrayed as very close and happy friends before the World War II. After the war, this relationship is dismantled by different political ideologies upon the arrival of the German and the Italians into Yugoslavia. These foreign nations came and backed the concept of Fascism in the host nation, a move that stirred a lot of tension in Yugoslavia. As stated earlier that the people of Yugoslavia turned against each other during such times, an episode is drawn when Toni, the Italian decides to join the Fascists and turned against his friends, who, seemed to lean on the Communists side. This very act of betrayal by close friends has also been clearly brought out in movie When Father was Away on Business. However, in this case of Toni and his friends, the betrayal was used by the director of the movie so as to relate with the situation during the rising of the Ustasha and their terrorist acts. As seen in a number of episodes, Toni turns out to be the worst enemy of his former friends after he had joined the cultic Ustasha terrorists. The fascists used him to attack and confiscate the properties of his friends. Other than being a representation of betrayal, Toni is also used to depict the very worst of the Ustasha raids on the Serbs, Jewish and the entire cohort of Communism. In the movie, thousands of the serbs are brutally totured, raped and mercilessly killed. The Fascists do not want to see any element of the opponent amongst them. Out of fear, the manager of the fencing club decides to dismiss Miho since he was a Jew. As will be discussed, this act of dismissal is similar to another episode in “When Father was Away on Business”. The episodes in the Occupation in 26 Frames described above are true portrayal of the happenings during the post World War II in Yugoslavia. For instance, there was betrayal of the state when General Nedic who was a former minister of War collaborated with the German authorities and founded a puppet regime in Yugoslavia. In return, the Germans gave Nedic the authority to form an army called Serbia State Guard. With the aid of this military, he later formed the National Salvation government. All these were still under the control of the German authority. In this case, General Nedic had conspired with a foreign government to cause havoc in his home country. The Germans knew very well that Nedic had served in the Yugoslavian government and thus, was well acquainted with the secret services of the nation. This was the same case when the Italian authority decided to use Toni who already lived in Yugoslavia for quite a long time. In the year 1941, the Ustasha regime started to form laws and policies that violated the human rights. In the month of April that very year, a specific law to defend the state of Croatia was enacted. That allowed the execution of any opponent of the governing regime; any other political minorities were not exempted. Even the court procedures during the trials of the opponents were shortened by the law hence no fair hearing. The victims of this law were the Serb communists. It soon turned into genocide as the communists between 1941 and 1945. It should be noted that the mass killing did not only focus on the Serbs but also any other anti-fascists, including the Jewish. This is what has been depicted in Occupation in 26 Frames when individuals disappear at night only to be found dead the following morning. The lucky communists found themselves in prison. “In the year 1930, the Croatian separatists, mainly Frankovci and Ustashas, along with the communist, comprised the majority of the political prisoners in Yugoslavia. Even though some had been apprehended for terrorism and violence, many were simply imprisoned for their political views, especially the communists (pg 103).” It was while in prison that these communists had conversations with the few Ustashas and discovered that the Ustasha leaders were collaborating with Fascists to cleanse all the communists from Serbia. While the episodes from Occupation in 26 Frames mainly portrays how the Serbs and the communists suffered in the hands of the Ustasha terrorists, similar episodes from When Father was Away on Business have been manipulated to vividly demonstrate how the natives of Yugoslavia felt the bitter consequences of the Tito-Stalin split and the poor post war economy. When Father was Away on Business takes place in the 1950s, in the middle of the economic crisis. Like in Occupation in 26 Frames, this movie also concentrates on the idea of Communism. As the film begins to unfold, you could hear the peasants singing in Mexican language. This is just to avoid being stereotyped by the Ustasha. Mexico seemed to be the neutral option for them. In the beginning, Mesa, Malik’s father, works in the ministry of labor. When Mesa makes an inappropriate comment about a cartoon in the newspaper, he is dismissed from the job, just like Miho from the fencing club. Here, there is also an element of betrayal by a close person. Zijo, Mesa’s brother in-law, uses the latter’s remarks to incriminate him. Zijo is Malik’s uncle and had been very close to the family yet he did not consider this relationship when he made Malik’s father go to prison. In the Occupation in 26 Frames, Toni was also the brother in-law to Niko since he had married Ana. However, he did not give it much attention when he participated in the killing of Niko’s father. Mesa, despite being a communist, made an innocent but anti-Tito remark to Mira. Zijo, being a strict communist, did not hesitate to report this. Both Toni and Zijo betrayed their in-laws and the sacred relationships. As Occupation in 26 Frames shows the atrocities committed by the Ustashas to the Communists, When Father was Away on Business has manipulated the dialogue and the pictures to show how Tito, the Communist leader, could imprison his own followers. This is depicted by the imprisonment of Mesa, a Communist. At that time, Tito had just broken up with Stalin and would not entertain any form of a mockery, not even from his own people. The main form of suffering seen in this movie is not the mass killing of the communist but the bad economy that made many lose their jobs. Most families, like Mesa’s while he was away, suffered from acute hunger. The West, which had celebrated the break-up between Tito and Stalin, were very hesitant to give financial support to the suffering Yugoslavia. The peasantry production had drastically decreased and so there was no food for feeding the Yugoslavian Army, the industrial workers and for export so as to generate some revenue for the government. In conclusion, both When Father was Away on Business and Occupation in 26 Frames have episodes that relate to the political history of Yugoslavia. They both depict the hard times in history of Yugoslavia. However, these two films have depicted these hard moments in separate ways; one film brought out the struggle between Ustashas and the Communist while another, the struggle by a Communist leader to boost a falling economy. Work Cited Goulding, Daniel. Occupation in 26 Frames. Wiltshire. Flicks Books. 1998. Print Read More